[Members - click here] I've been going retroactive (maybe it should be called retropassive, since it means going into the past)... anyhow... I have been bringing over some of the bear-pics videos over to PlanetBears, turning them into FLVs (when you watch a YouTube flick, it's in FLV format).

In this update, there's 2 videos from the TickleBears (here and here) in which Blithwulf (gallery - photo - profile) and his buddy John take turns in this creative rack they built so as to tickle Bear feet. Then there is this video that I call 'Dildo Bear' (here) since this Bear straps a dildo first firmly to the floor then to a chair and goes to town on it. And finally there is a good old Mystery Bear video (here). Mystery Bear and his partner ran FurBear.net (now defunct) and they produced a bunch of videos of this cute Bear, making movies while strategically hiding his face. They had sent me a ton of short videos when I was working at bear-pics and now I cannot find them, which is a pity, however I did find one, so I added it.

I will try and add more from the bear-pics volume when I can find the time to do so. To see some preview pics of Mystery Bear and Dildo Bear, click here, and to see some older pics of Blithwulf, go here. To see all the videos, check out the Video section.

[Members - click here] When I used to run Bear-Pics.com (from '00 to '06), I had a section for Amateur photos. What this section consisted of was a slew of pics sent in by a bunch of cute Bearish guys. Over those years, this section grew as more and more good looking men sent in their homebrewed pics. However, once I closed the doors to Bear-Pics, all those photos were taken down.

What I decided to do today on PlanetBears was put these photos back up, and so far I added 498 pics from 24 husky hot guys. There's still more photos that I need to add which I will do very soon. I am also trying to figure out the best way on how I want to layout these galleries, however for now I just bunched them up and placed them into 2 areas.

Now on the flipside of things, I want to breathe life back into this Amateur section - so if you have pics of yourself you'd like to share, then email them in or use the contact form. If they get used, in exchange I will give you a year's membership to PlanetBears. Send in more pics later on and you'll get another year free, it's as simple as that.

Click here to see some previews.

Last week we told you about a new show called 'Britain's Next Bear Model' (article) which consists of 8 guys living in the same room as they compete to be UK's newest Bear model.

In episode #1, we got to meet 5 of the 8 contestants, and even though I try to remain as biased as possible, I did slip in that I thought Steve was cute (well, so is Alan... and so is Kris... however Steve definitely wins the Daddy Bear vote). Well in the newest episode (#2), the final 3 competitors have entered, and say hello to Raff (woof) Leopold (double woof) Sean (triple woof). Yes, Sean is now a new favourite of mine... however it's not up to me who is going to win this thing, it's up to you.

You need to head on over to either EuroWoof (you need to register) or even better, just head on over to the FunFur.tv forum (no registration needed) and cast your vote on who you think should first make it to the top 3 to finally down to #1. This is episode 2 out of 7, so keep watching as things begin to heat up now that all the cuteys are together.

Have you been following the Bear Degeneration chronicles...? I hope so because we are now up to #10 in the English series. See it here - page #1 - page #2 - page #3 - page #4. In this episode, Doctor Puzak meets up with DarkDom, the evil police captain of Fatterland. If he doesn't like you, you're forked.

Bear Degeneration is the creation of the ever so cute and huggable Italian artist Perdido (website - profile). He has been creating these cartoons in Italian and he's up to episode #17 (and his drawing technique have been changing and improving all the while). So if you're good in Italian, then check out this page from his Blog. When I saw the cartoons, I was seriously curious what the story was about, so I have been helping Perdido with translating the toon over into English, and so far we've done 10.

If you haven't read a single one of these, it's best you start at the beginning - episode #1 - episode #2 - episode #3 - episode #4 - episode #5 - episode #6 - episode #7 - episode #8 - episode #9... and for today's update - episode #10.

My goal with that site was to add Roger's (galleries - videos - profile) photos and videos there, and I did manage to place a bunch of photos, a lot of them not seen anywhere else. Now, since I was putting my time and energy into BearFoot and not into the PlanetBears galleries, well I wasn't adding any photos to PlanetBears and some members were getting restless. So... I decided to therefore allow PlanetBears members to 'preview' BearFoot. I made a call in the news stating that all PlanetBears members should contact me and in turn I would give them a temporary user/pw.

Well, after making this call 2 times in the news and once in the newsletter, I would say only 1/10th of the PlanetBears members contacted me in order to get their temp user/pw... which led me to conclude that not many people read what's on the net. I could probably write anything I want and get away with it since people seem to be skipping the text in favour of looking at the pics and videos. I'm not passing judgement, I'm much the same way.

Here's a new drawing from the Spanish Bear Yotto Bano (article). You can see more of his 'Graffiti & Urban Bear Art' over at one of the coolest Bear blog names yet - it's called UrsaLaLaLa. Yotto even sent in a 'TubeBear drawing' awhile back, and so can you. Check out this article which will explain on how you can have your artwork displayed on TubeBear as well. You don't even need a profile nor a website... just the art.

Got Fur? (website - you need to register - it's free) is once again holding their 'Best of the Bears' ballot. What this means is that you get to first nominate and then vote for what you think are the 'Best of...' in several Bearish categories. In 2006 (article) it was Bear411 that won for best website. In 2007 (article) it was BearCiti. Who's it gonna be for 2008...?

Below are the categories to nominate/vote for. Right now they are taking your nominations and they will be doing so up until November 15th. Then the voting will begin - and you'll be able to vote from November 16th thru December 3rd. Copy and paste and email your choices in:

Best Bear Website...
Best Bear Blog...
Best Bear Nonfiction Book...
Best Bear Fiction Book...
Best Bear Podcast...
Best Bear Porn Site...
Best Bear Video...
Best Bear Porn Star...
Best Bear Business...
Best Bear Celebrity...
Best Bear Publication...
Best Bear Club/Organization...
Best Bear Run...
Best Bear Bar...
Best Bear Fundraiser...
Best Bear Campsite...
Best Bear Accommodations...
Best Bear Play Party...
Best Bear Resource...
Best Bear Artist...
Best Bear Performer...

His real name is Joe Mannetti however many of you know him as Joe Falconi (photo - courtesy of Lee Friend of Talk Magazine) . He has been the heartthrob to many a Bear lover as he's appeared in quite a few photo shoots, magazines and Bear movies. You might even remember seeing him for a few seconds on Conan O'Brien (altho much to the dislike of CyberBears).

Well Joe has been a very busy Bear of late, especially with the ton of work he puts into the GLBT community. You should check out this article on The Complete Bear (website - profile) to see all the things he has been up as well as all the things he'll be doing.

Oh - he also just won the Mr. Los Angeles Bear '08 title held by BearsLA at Oil Can Harry's last September 13th. A huge congratulations goes to him.

On a personal note, I have always found Joe super duper cute ever since I first saw his photos on BearBound (preview pics of Joe - articles - profile). There's something about him that just captures your eye... and keeps it focused on him. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from him in the upcoming future.

The newest edition of Beef Magazine (cover - website - profile) is out - issue #38, and with each passing edition, this magazine gets better and better.

First off, editor Scott McGillivray (articles) talks about the end of the world which will be December 21st 2012... didn't he know...? Turn the page and you got a great 'BeerCan and Saurus' cartoon by Brutus (YouTube page) - this one is just classic - "it's so nice of you Amish people to give us a ride!"... ok... onto the men... there's Joe and Jake for your viewing pleasure, and there's a feature on the magic of Minoru (website - articles). Pick it up at your local adult shop or get it online via subscription on their site.

Click Here to see a short video that Roger (galleries - articles - profile) and I (Forrest - profile) made one summer day (click here to see a list of all the videos). We tried something a little different when it came to binding feet; we also bound Roger's toes together, as in - his big toe bound to his big toe right down to his pinky toe being bound to his other pinky toe. It was then that I realized just how flexible his cute stocky feet are.

There's no sound to this video and it's a little short - about 3 minutes or so, but it's still fun to see. Here are a few quick snapshots as well (photo #1 ~ large - small) (photo #2 ~ large - small) (photo #3 ~ large - small).

There's some unrelated bad news, but there's a bit of good news as well. The bad news is that the external harddrive that I have all my videos of Roger short circuited, actually blackening the circuits, all because I plugged in the wrong AC adapter (they all look so alike). So I brought this external HD to the computer shop, and not to get into any technical details, they are working on it. The possible bad news is that I might have to spend a lot of money to extract the data, which would suck something seriously. The good news is that I still have most of the master copies on MiniDV cassettes so if they are going to ask for a bundle to extract the data, I'll just spend a couple of days loading all the videos into another external harddrive.

So, if you need to learn something today, learn from me: Buddha Bob says use the right plug for the right box, unless you enjoy the smell of circuits frying in the morning.

Back in '05, I had the chance to spend a day with René, aka OneDragon (galleries - profile). In that day we were able to take an incredible amount of photos, and our first stop was in a field near a sand mining factory. This field is pretty huge with a man-made lake next to it. There's also a lot of abandoned areas here and there, as well as a bunch of industrial junk lying around.

Anyhow, the photos from that shoot turned out great, so much so that one of the pictures inspired artist Brent D. Marr (website - articles - profile) to draw one of the photos - here is Brent's drawing and here is the original picture.

It put a huge smile on my face to see that image, and so I decided to make this photo set public. You can see all 69 images here. They are 800x600 and members can see the 1600x1200 ones (including all the other OneDragon photos).

We are giving away another DVD and this time the winner is SasBear (profile - photo). The DVD he won is from ButchBear entitled 'Tool Chest'. And what did SasBear do in order to win this DVD...? He simply created a profile with TubeBear.

This is our 2nd giveaway (the first winner was JovenBear - profile - article), and we are planning on giving out more (starting in October, we'll be giving out 2 a month up until Xmas). And all you have to do in order to possibly win one is to sign up with TubeBear.

By the way, there's over 8700 profiles so far on TubeBear, and we chose the winner (SasBear) randomly... however before his name came up, mine came up (Forrest - CAM). It was like... I won my own prize. I feel like I should buy a lottery ticket or hit the casino.

Come join some of the hottest Bears in the Midwest as they gather for the upcoming Michigan BearFest 5 which will be taking place in Grand Rapids, MI from November 7th thru the 9th. This event will be supporting BASIS which is a Flint, Saginaw and Bay City area HIV/AIDS charity. Head on over to their website for all the details such as hotel, calendar and registration.